Speaker 1: This is Gavin Newsom. This is doctor Sanjay Gupta.
Speaker 2: Sanja.
Speaker 1: It's great to have you. I appreciate the opportunity because
Speaker 1: I look, all of us are reflecting on whether this is,
Speaker 1: as it feels to many of us, one of the
Speaker 1: most sort of challenging and profoundly consequential moments with health
Speaker 1: care policy in our lifetime, or perhaps putting it more perspective,
Speaker 1: more historically, even thinking back a little bit to Obamacare
Speaker 1: and their debates and the sort of fundamental shifts in
Speaker 1: health policy we're taking shape there. So I thought i'd
Speaker 1: just opened up just ask you about the landscape, ask
Speaker 1: you about your perspective, particularly from the prism of not
Speaker 1: just a policy expert and a pundit, but also as
Speaker 1: a practitioner. What world are we living in as it
Speaker 1: relates to healthcare policy in the United States today?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, broadly speaking, I think one of the
Speaker 3: and we've been talking thinking about this a lot, is
Speaker 3: sort of what is the United States role when it
Speaker 3: comes to science, healthcare, science, public health, all of that.
Speaker 2: I think for.
Speaker 3: Eighty some years we were sort of the world leader,
Speaker 3: sort of post World War Two. That became part of
Speaker 3: our DNA and the United States and take great pride
Speaker 3: in and we recruit the best scientists in the world.
Speaker 3: Some of the greatest scientific achievements over the last century
Speaker 3: have come from the United States, and I think it's
Speaker 3: been something that certainly people in the scientific community, but
Speaker 3: I think the population at large really have rallied behind,
Speaker 3: taken great pride in people coming from other countries for
Speaker 3: our medical care, new therapies coming out of the United States,
Speaker 3: all of that.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the and.
Speaker 3: I don't want to overstate this, but I think one
Speaker 3: of the worrisome things right now is.
Speaker 2: Is that still the case?
Speaker 3: Do we still think that that's important? Kind of like
Speaker 3: maybe how we talked about My parents both worked in
Speaker 3: the auto industry, and I think there was a time
Speaker 3: period where people said, should we still be building.
Speaker 2: Cars in the United States?
Speaker 3: And my parents both ended up leaving the auto industry
Speaker 3: in two thousand and one because they were fearful that
Speaker 3: the industry was just going to change. It did not
Speaker 3: got bailed out, as you know, and all these things happened,
Speaker 3: and here we are today. I think it sort of
Speaker 3: feels this has some of those same tones as that
Speaker 3: are we going to look back twenty years from now
Speaker 3: and say the United States is still the global leader
Speaker 3: when it comes to these things. That's the thing that
Speaker 3: I worry about, sort of philosophically, sort of more practically speaking.
Speaker 3: Governor's something you talk about a lot as well. We're
Speaker 3: not a healthy country. We spend four and a half
Speaker 3: trillion dollars on healthcare. We don't have a lot to
Speaker 3: show for it in terms of outcomes, in terms of
Speaker 3: overall health. I think we saw that ripped off like
Speaker 3: a band aid during the pandemic. People say, how can
Speaker 3: a country that spends that kind of money do so
Speaker 3: poorly with regard to patient outcomes. We walked in pretty
Speaker 3: unhealthy into that situation. So I think some of that
Speaker 3: needs to change. And frankly, most of that problem, I
Speaker 3: think is in how we nourish ourselves, you know, the
Speaker 3: foods that we put into our body, the chemicals that
Speaker 3: we ingest. It's a problem. It's part of the reason
Speaker 3: I got into medical journalism in the first place. That
Speaker 3: needs to change, and people have been saying that for
Speaker 3: a long time.
Speaker 2: You talk about it in California. First Lady Obama used
Speaker 2: to talk about that.
Speaker 3: You know, Michael Bloomberg talked about that when as Mayor
Speaker 3: of New York, so it's not a new discussion, but
Speaker 3: I think it's one that needs to be had.
Speaker 1: So I want to get to both subjects cause I
Speaker 1: think it's interesting as you start with the larger issue
Speaker 1: as some of us and I'm not putting words in
Speaker 1: your mouth, but there's sort of this war on knowledge
Speaker 1: more broadly speaking, and certainly scientific expression is part of that,
Speaker 1: this notion of just confidence in trans parency, truth trust.
Speaker 1: We can get to missing disinformation and how that debate
Speaker 1: plays out differently through the lens ideological lens on both
Speaker 1: sides of the political prism. But the interesting thing I
Speaker 1: think you underscored is just this trend line that's been
Speaker 1: decades and decades. It's i think growing headline in some
Speaker 1: ways because of this Maha movement. And I think if
Speaker 1: there's one sort of reckoning, it's a recognition with RFK Junior,
Speaker 1: and we can get to the more controversial aspects of it.
Speaker 1: But this whole Maha movement is interesting to me. You
Speaker 1: brought up Obama first, Ladya Michelle Obama in the Let's
Speaker 1: Move campaign, her focus on issues of a chronic disease
Speaker 1: obesity school lunches, which was exceptional at the time, and
Speaker 1: I was exceptionally engaged in that campaign. I think it
Speaker 1: was a twenty ten ish plus or minus. But where
Speaker 1: are you in this Maha movement. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: a breakthrough in terms of consciousness, on a wellness frame,
Speaker 1: on a focus on some of these broader issues that
Speaker 1: are been under resourced in terms of time and attention.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I do think a lot more
Speaker 3: people are talking about this.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I wish it didn't require, you know, sort of really
Speaker 3: demeaning certain populations of people to do it, But there's
Speaker 3: no question it has struck a nerve and I hear
Speaker 3: people talking about it from circles that I had not
Speaker 3: heard people talking about this before, just in terms of
Speaker 3: really wanting to have some autonomy over their own health.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of kernels of truth, I think
Speaker 3: to what is happening out of the Maha movement, it is.
Speaker 3: It is I think largely based on precautionary principle, which
Speaker 3: we can talk about more because I think there's other
Speaker 3: aspects of what is happening in healthcare that are the
Speaker 3: opposite of precautionary principle. This demand for more evidence and
Speaker 3: replication of evidence. And it's not just be careful, it's
Speaker 3: let's prove this to the nth degree before we make
Speaker 3: any movements. But with regard to ultra process foods, with
Speaker 3: regard to petroleum based die some of these petroleum based dies,
Speaker 3: Governor should have probably never been approved no nutritional value.
Speaker 3: They were purely aesthetic. There's many countries around the world
Speaker 3: that don't have them. These food manufacturers can clearly make
Speaker 3: these products without them.
Speaker 2: I have kids.
Speaker 3: I've worried about this for a long time, so people
Speaker 3: have been talking about it, but no one got it done.
Speaker 3: You did in California, and now it's starting to happen,
Speaker 3: I think more to national level.
Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting so jays know some of the
Speaker 1: things we let on. I appreciate you highlighting. I mean,
Speaker 1: and this has been a passion project for me, going
Speaker 1: back to my mayor days when you referenced Mayor Bloomberg
Speaker 1: and I were very competitive in this space as mayor's
Speaker 1: He with a much larger platform in New York, I
Speaker 1: with a little smaller platform in San Francisco. But I've
Speaker 1: deeply been committed as you have in terms of all
Speaker 1: your work focusing not on sick care, but healthcare, focusing
Speaker 1: on social determinants of health, which we'll talk about in
Speaker 1: a moment, and wellness and prevention. But one of the
Speaker 1: things that is really you know, came to the four
Speaker 1: with me through a political ends was this notion of
Speaker 1: ultra processed food, but specifically as it relates to food dies.
Speaker 1: And we did something that was referred to on the
Speaker 1: far right which was the Great Irony and mocked. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many with respect to another
Speaker 1: news network there three news network mocked consistently called the
Speaker 1: Skittles band because we were moving red dye and we
Speaker 1: were the first state to do that. Now it seems
Speaker 1: to be socialized in the political spectrum on the right
Speaker 1: as sort of you know, endowed leadership from the MAHA movement.
Speaker 1: But what was the movement towards all this? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's there's chemical chemicals aside, but additives. There's
Speaker 1: sort of obsession. Is it just it was a taste?
Speaker 1: Was a texture that we were after? Was it longevity? Freshness?
Speaker 1: Why the US not the EU? What was it? What
Speaker 1: is unique about the United States that we became overly
Speaker 1: indulgent in these additives and chemicals.
Speaker 3: I think it's more than more than one thing, but
Speaker 3: I do think a lot of it had to do
Speaker 3: with longevity, initially increasing shelf life of food, and that
Speaker 3: really got it a lot of additives, even going back
Speaker 3: to hydrogenated corn syrup versus sugar. You know, when you're
Speaker 3: adding these types of things in there, you're not only
Speaker 3: adding sweetness to some extent, but you're adding how moist
Speaker 3: the food is and how long it's going to last
Speaker 3: on a shelf. I think, trying to remember, you know,
Speaker 3: former President Clinton used to talk about this. You can
Speaker 3: feed a lot of people a lot of calories for
Speaker 3: cheap if you're having these ultra processed foods. You know,
Speaker 3: if you have family at McDonald's for twenty five bucks,
Speaker 3: you know if you have ultra processed foods.
Speaker 2: So I think it.
Speaker 3: You know, if you increase shelf life, you can decrease costs.
Speaker 3: I do think the aesthetics of the food is not
Speaker 3: an issue to be minimized, though it's very I don't
Speaker 3: know if you heard the story about what happened with
Speaker 3: fruit loops. I think back about a life years ago,
Speaker 3: twenty fourteen timeframe, where you know, they basically said, all right,
Speaker 3: let's remove some of these food dies. There was a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure to remove the food dyes, and the
Speaker 3: root loops as a result, were not as brightly colored.
Speaker 2: They were kind of bland color.
Speaker 3: If you go to Europe and go to a hotel
Speaker 3: or something, you go to the breakfast buffet and you
Speaker 3: get fruit loops, they're bland colored fruit loops. They're the
Speaker 3: same fruit loops otherwise, but they just don't look the same.
Speaker 3: And what they found when they did that in the
Speaker 3: United States was two things. One is that people didn't
Speaker 3: buy those blandly colored fruit loops, and two is they
Speaker 3: kind of got accused of the same thing that you
Speaker 3: were talking about, sort of nanny state, don't take away
Speaker 3: our brightly colored fruit loops, same thing that Mayor Bloomberg
Speaker 3: got accused of when he wanted to not sell sixteen
Speaker 3: out sodas anymore any state. And so it's really it's interesting, Governor,
Speaker 3: this balance between personal freedom and health. And what is
Speaker 3: interesting is that you can be sort of thinking the
Speaker 3: same thing and approach that in two completely different ways.
Speaker 3: One hand, I'm going to do precautionary principle. We're not
Speaker 3: going to have food dies doesn't make sense, no nutritional value.
Speaker 3: Why would we do that? I kind of agree with that. Again,
Speaker 3: as a health conscious person myself, I like to eat right,
Speaker 3: I like to exercise every day. Why would I do
Speaker 3: something like that to my body?
Speaker 2: On the other hand, what is the level.
Speaker 3: Of evidence you need to have before making a decision?
Speaker 3: Prove to me that red dye number three is bad?
Speaker 2: Prove it. Maybe some will say, why do you need
Speaker 2: to prove it causes.
Speaker 3: Cancer and animals and we should have never approved it
Speaker 3: in any ways, But what is the level of evidence?
Speaker 3: And that's going to extend, I think beyond food and
Speaker 3: additives to vaccines and therapeutics and other things. I think
Speaker 3: that's going to be the crux of the.
Speaker 1: Issue, and it's important on the precautionary frame and the
Speaker 1: precautionary principle. I mean, I think that's fundamentally, isn't it
Speaker 1: The difference between the EU policy where so many of
Speaker 1: these foods just simply never make the shelf, and fundamental
Speaker 1: policy that's advanced in the United States.
Speaker 3: That is exactly your friend, I think Todd Wagner, who's
Speaker 3: a friend of mine as well, he talks about this
Speaker 3: a lot. He started this organization food Fight, and you know,
Speaker 3: when I spend time talking to these folks and reporting
Speaker 3: on this, people will always say the same thing, which is,
Speaker 3: I go to Europe, I hate the same foods, pasta.
Speaker 2: I do whatever, and I feel great.
Speaker 3: Great, I lose weight. I all that. Now, some of
Speaker 3: that may be that you're you're active more over there
Speaker 3: as well. There could be other things, but I think
Speaker 3: there's something definitely to that.
Speaker 2: And that I think that so it's it's a little bit.
Speaker 3: More than precautionary principle. You have these large cohorts of
Speaker 3: the population that say, I have lived in both those worlds,
Speaker 3: I've eaten both these foods, and I can feel the
Speaker 3: difference in my own body.
Speaker 2: I think you can't.
Speaker 3: You can't ignore that, again with the backdrop that those
Speaker 3: petroleum based eyes don't have any nutritional value, not losing
Speaker 3: anything by stripping them out other than aesthetics, which.
Speaker 2: You know, maybe may be important.
Speaker 3: People people do like their brightly colored fruit loops. As
Speaker 3: it turns out.
Speaker 1: So you talk about you're talking in the terms of
Speaker 1: precautionary principles, sort of the the two ends of this,
Speaker 1: and you reference the issue of vaccines. Is that a
Speaker 1: reference to m r NA vaccines? Is that in what
Speaker 1: respect is a precautionary principle sort of the one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty degree uh flip side of that principle being
Speaker 1: abused in terms of or is it just moreover on
Speaker 1: what more evidence do you need of something being bad
Speaker 1: or good? Is it the same thing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's I think it's a m RNA vaccines,
Speaker 3: but but but more widely, I think it's vaccines in general.
Speaker 3: And I think it's maybe even the response to things
Speaker 3: like a pandemic. You know, when you're dealing with something
Speaker 3: that is novel. I mean, by the way, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: COVID was a novel disease. We had never experienced it before.
Speaker 3: And I know people said said that a lot novel virus.
Speaker 3: You heard that a lot. But I mean, if you
Speaker 3: really sit and think about that, it's kind of extraordinary.
Speaker 2: I mean, as an.
Speaker 3: Adult, we don't get to experience novel things very often.
Speaker 3: Kids experience novel things all the time. But when is
Speaker 3: the last time you governor experienced something for the first time.
Speaker 3: Doesn't happen very often. So now you're dealing with something
Speaker 3: that is novel and you have to say, okay, look,
Speaker 3: our response isn't going to be exactly right.
Speaker 2: Nothing's exactly right.
Speaker 3: Where are we going to tilt? What side we're going
Speaker 3: to err on? Are we going to air on precautionary
Speaker 3: principle or going to are we going to err on
Speaker 3: the side of let's sort of see how things go
Speaker 3: and you know, figure it out as we go along.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, public health, the the training
Speaker 3: often is to to sort of side with precautionary principle.
Speaker 3: It's like, let's be careful as we sort of sort
Speaker 3: this out, how is this virus behaving? Who's it affecting?
Speaker 3: So I think MR and A vaccines were part of that.
Speaker 3: I mean, people, I think understandably would say, we need
Speaker 3: long term data on these things before we start releasing them.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really fair sort of thing to say.
Speaker 3: But you realize that in the middle of a pandemic
Speaker 3: to get long term data means you have to wait
Speaker 3: long term or are you're going to wait five years, ten years?
Speaker 3: What does long term mean? You know, if it's for
Speaker 3: a kid, is it eighty years? What does it mean
Speaker 3: in terms.
Speaker 2: Of how long you're willing to wait? What struck me.
Speaker 3: And again, this is finding the balance between precautionary principle
Speaker 3: and evidence. Is that we knew that for vaccines, the
Speaker 3: vast majority of the time, greater than ninety percent of
Speaker 3: the time of side effects were to occur, they would
Speaker 3: occur within the first sixty eight days. That was the number,
Speaker 3: so just over two months. So then the idea that
Speaker 3: the FDA would say, well, let's wait three months, let's
Speaker 3: just let's try and cover as many possible side effects
Speaker 3: that have come from this as possible before we give
Speaker 3: emergency use authorization. Is that is an example I think
Speaker 3: of policy that you have to sort of think about
Speaker 3: in the throes of something like this. It is still
Speaker 3: precautionary because we don't know the long term data. On
Speaker 3: the other hand, you're using the best evidence that we
Speaker 3: do have in terms of what history has taught us.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, I know it's been a
Speaker 3: sort of cluster since that, but I think at the
Speaker 3: time to me as a reporter, a medical reporter, and
Speaker 3: as a doctor, but also as a dad, that made sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the side effects are going to occur.
Speaker 3: They usually occur within two and a half months. Let's
Speaker 3: keep a close eye on this thing, watch it like
Speaker 3: a hawk, wait even longer than that, and at that point,
Speaker 3: if things look good, then I go ahead and provide
Speaker 3: an EUA for it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's interesting it continues to this day. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously at the state level, when we saw the Surgeon
Speaker 1: General of Florida come out and recommend against m mRNA vaccines.
Speaker 1: Obviously the President is spoken from every side on this issue.
Speaker 1: I mean, considering you, through Operation warp Speed was the
Speaker 1: one advancing the platform and the technology. But obviously the
Speaker 1: new Health and Human Service Secretary has been very critical
Speaker 1: and has been prone arguably to some sort of wild
Speaker 1: eyed theories around DNA issues related to the the RMA
Speaker 1: m RNA vaccine and concerns around DNA concerns obviously around
Speaker 1: its safety, uh and and in the side effects. What
Speaker 1: what's where are you now in terms of just your concerns.
Speaker 1: Our m RNA is not just for COVID vaccine, right,
Speaker 1: It's also used for other vaccines.
Speaker 3: Use for other vaccines, and use for other therapies entirely,
Speaker 3: including cancer therapies right their clinical trials now trying to
Speaker 3: use these types of platforms m r and A platforms
Speaker 3: for very difficult to treat cancers, including pancreative cancer, which
Speaker 3: we don't have great, great answers for. You know, I
Speaker 3: think I'm I think I'm pretty practical on this. I
Speaker 3: think where we are now in twenty twenty five versus
Speaker 3: certainly when these vaccines got approved were in a different place,
Speaker 3: meaning that even though the uptake of vaccines has gone
Speaker 3: way down, most people did get the initial series of vaccines,
Speaker 3: and we know that they can, especially for young people,
Speaker 3: they can provide more durable relief. There hasn't, you know,
Speaker 3: after the initial what they call ancestral strains of COVID
Speaker 3: before omicron.
Speaker 2: I think these still provide pretty good.
Speaker 3: Protection, especially for young people whose immune systems really respond
Speaker 3: to them. So I still think, you know, I said
Speaker 3: this before. I think this was one of the great
Speaker 3: scientific achievements of my time as as a human being.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, when textbooks are written about scientific achievements,
Speaker 3: the idea that they were able to create a vaccine
Speaker 3: essentially in nine months and be able to you know,
Speaker 3: protect so many people.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of people who think they don't work.
Speaker 2: They do work.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you looked at the data California or
Speaker 3: the country as a whole. Who was in the hospital
Speaker 3: during the huge sort of swings and COVID It was
Speaker 3: primarily people who were not vaccinated, so it was helping
Speaker 3: protect against illness and death. What I think was unfortunate, Frankly,
Speaker 3: and this was a communications problem, was that they seemed
Speaker 3: to also intimate that it would protect you from getting
Speaker 3: COVID at all, from carrying it, and there was not
Speaker 3: great evidence behind that, And you know, we reported as
Speaker 3: such that you don't have great evidence that shows that
Speaker 3: when you have a vaccine that's protecting against illness, it's
Speaker 3: usually protecting in your lower respiratory and your lungs, so
Speaker 3: you're not getting that really really sort of a deep illness,
Speaker 3: but you might still have it in your mucosa, in
Speaker 3: your mouth and your nose, in your upper airway, so
Speaker 3: you could potentially still be carrying it and still potentially
Speaker 3: spread it. That wasn't I think a communications error, and
Speaker 3: I think, Frankly, Governor, I think it led to a
Speaker 3: lot of distrust overall of these MR and A vaccines.
Speaker 3: You said, you said I couldn't get COVID if I
Speaker 3: got this, Well I got COVID and I spread it.
Speaker 3: So what is this is a vaccine or is it
Speaker 3: not a vaccine that was that was a problem?
Speaker 1: And do you I mean, are we being oversensitive hyperbolic
Speaker 1: as it relates to how now this is manifested with
Speaker 1: the new recommendations that for pregnant women and for children
Speaker 1: they shouldn't even be getting these boosters on COVID or
Speaker 1: is that overstated or is that a more targeted approach?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's rational? We can talk about how
Speaker 1: that was done without the CDC an advisory committee that
Speaker 1: usually advises in terms of recommendation, but the outcome ultimately
Speaker 1: of that decision. Where are you on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, first of all, you know, with regard to
Speaker 3: the CDC and expertise, I mean, you know, it amazed
Speaker 3: me when I watch people like Tom Frieden during Ebola
Speaker 3: or Richard Besser during H one n one do their
Speaker 3: briefings in front of the CDC, and they would say,
Speaker 3: behind us, we have four thousand of these smartest, most
Speaker 3: hard working scientists in the world.
Speaker 2: They are so good that other.
Speaker 3: Infectious to these organizations, and other countries model their organizations
Speaker 3: after us, even calling their organizations the CDC.
Speaker 2: I mean, that was a source of great pride.
Speaker 3: I think for people in the public health world, myself included,
Speaker 3: I think where I am now at this point in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five is, first of all, I think what
Speaker 3: Sexuary Kennedy has said versus what is reality is different.
Speaker 3: There's daylight between those two things. So he basically said
Speaker 3: no more boosters for kids, basically no more shots. Even
Speaker 3: now on the CDC's website, that's not what it says.
Speaker 3: It says it should be a shared clinical decision between
Speaker 3: patient and provider. So for kids, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I mean, if your kid has asthma, do you want
Speaker 3: to get your kid a COVID shot? How bad is
Speaker 3: the asthma, how many times they require an inhaler, Do
Speaker 3: they have diabetes, do they require insulin? You know these
Speaker 3: are there's nuance to that decision, and I think, you know,
Speaker 3: the general approach has always been, instead of trying to
Speaker 3: stratify all this by risk, which can be difficult as
Speaker 3: a country to do, let's just recommend the vaccine. I
Speaker 3: think what they're saying is let's do risk stratification and
Speaker 3: let's put it at the hands of the.
Speaker 2: Providers, of the doctors, you know, for these kids. I
Speaker 2: think that makes sense.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, if your kid is otherwise healthy,
Speaker 3: they've had their primary series, which most kids have had.
Speaker 2: We haven't had new variants that are worrisome.
Speaker 3: For the time being. I think that that makes sense.
Speaker 3: Pregnant women I would put into a different category. I mean,
Speaker 3: the thing about pregnancy is that when you're pregnant. When
Speaker 3: someone is pregnant, they their immune system is compromised intentionally,
Speaker 3: the way the body works. You don't want to reject
Speaker 3: this new body inside your body, inside a woman's body.
Speaker 3: So the idea that you know, you would be more
Speaker 3: vulnerable to infections while pregnant is real. In fact, you know,
Speaker 3: the FDA commissioner wrote before these new recommendations came out,
Speaker 3: he listed pregnancy as a high risk condition for COVID
Speaker 3: and then a couple days later said pregnant women don't
Speaker 3: need it. I mean, if people's heads were spinning, I
Speaker 3: would understand why.
Speaker 2: The second thing.
Speaker 3: About pregnant women is that if they get vaccinated, they
Speaker 3: can actually pass on some of the antibodies to their child,
Speaker 3: So for the first six months of life, that child
Speaker 3: may have protection, and they're very young. Kids like that
Speaker 3: are very, very vulnerable to COVID. Some of the rates
Speaker 3: of severe illness they approximate what older adults have, so
Speaker 3: very young, very old, both can get very sick. But young, young,
Speaker 3: young kids under the age of six months can't get
Speaker 3: a vaccine, so mom can provide protection. But now they're
Speaker 3: sort of recommending against that as well, don't I don't
Speaker 3: think it'll stick. I think most infectious these doctors, you know,
Speaker 3: if you go to your doctor as a pregnant woman,
Speaker 3: will say, hey, look, here's the benefits. You're you're immune
Speaker 3: compromised as a result of pregnancy, and you can help
Speaker 3: protect your child after they are born. I think most
Speaker 3: people will will, you know, at least pay attention to.
Speaker 1: That as it code read what's happening with vaccines generally,
Speaker 1: the sort of growing anxiety around vacs. I was listening
Speaker 1: to your podcast recently just about you know, people expressing
Speaker 1: concern they're getting so many shots a young child, newborn,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they're getting four or five shots.
Speaker 1: Twenty years ago they may have gotten less shots. But
Speaker 1: you described a very different construct as it relates to
Speaker 1: anogens and proteins and dose, which was fascinating to me
Speaker 1: and obviously calmed I think the nerves of those who
Speaker 1: were inquiring. But talk to me more broadly about the
Speaker 1: state of vaccines, your anxiety and pushback against some of
Speaker 1: this vaccine skepticism that's out there.
Speaker 3: Well with regard to the you know, you hear these
Speaker 3: crazy numbers, you know, seventy two vaccines and all that. First,
Speaker 3: all those are just made up numbers. It's weird to me, Governor,
Speaker 3: there's no accountability for people saying stuff that's just absolutely
Speaker 3: not true. I hope people, you know people they always say,
Speaker 3: do your own research. I hope people do their own
Speaker 3: research with regard to some of this. So, yeah, we
Speaker 3: vaccinated against more diseases than we used to when you
Speaker 3: and I our kids were around the same age. But
Speaker 3: what you're referring to is this something known as the
Speaker 3: antigenic load, which is really what you know, scientists pay
Speaker 3: attention to how much of a sort of load of
Speaker 3: antigens are we giving to the body. And what you
Speaker 3: find is that nowadays, compared to days when we are
Speaker 3: still vaccinating against things like smallpox, for example, the load
Speaker 3: is much much lower, exponentially lower than we used to give.
Speaker 3: Even though there's more vaccines. Vaccine technology has gotten better.
Speaker 3: They use adjuvants to to so you don't have to
Speaker 3: give as much of the overall whether it be live
Speaker 3: virus or anything else, as we used to. So we
Speaker 3: don't sort of cause the immune system to react nearly
Speaker 3: as much today as we used to in the past
Speaker 3: because of that anergenetic load. So you know, numbers of
Speaker 3: shots and all that. Look again, as a dad, I
Speaker 3: don't like saying my kids get shots.
Speaker 2: I get that.
Speaker 3: I understand that, but in terms of what it's actually
Speaker 3: doing to the body compared to what we used to
Speaker 3: do to the body at a time when, by the way,
Speaker 3: autism was a much lower rate, so we used to
Speaker 3: give a much bigger anergentic load and lower autism rates.
Speaker 3: Now we have a much lower anergenic load and we
Speaker 3: have higher autism rates. Make of that what you may
Speaker 3: those that's the data, that's the facts, and so I
Speaker 3: don't know that I would call it code red, but
Speaker 3: I think that this the argument against I think what
Speaker 3: is a very very effective preventative strategy gain a lot
Speaker 3: of them, and I think people are becoming increasingly increasingly
Speaker 3: concerned about vaccines and has it What did.
Speaker 1: You make I mean, you were out there in Texas,
Speaker 1: this measles outbreak. I mean, and you know, folks arguing
Speaker 1: for more, and look, I'm not belittling it, but it
Speaker 1: was interesting to me cod liver vitamin as a solution,
Speaker 1: not vaccines. I was reading in different sources that you know,
Speaker 1: a double digit percentage of people that you know had
Speaker 1: measles ended up in the emergency rooms and people are
Speaker 1: still arguing for heavy loads of vitamin A. I mean,
Speaker 1: give me a sense of, you know, on the ground
Speaker 1: truth seeking that you did, and you know, how does
Speaker 1: that play in sort of a modern flashpoint with this
Speaker 1: ideological movement and the practical realities on the ground.
Speaker 3: I think for the physicians and nurses and everybody who's
Speaker 3: caring for patients there, it was incredibly frustrating for them.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're talking about vaccine preventable disease. We essentially
Speaker 3: native measles in this country. I think when we say frustrating,
Speaker 3: it's like, how are we going to make big swings
Speaker 3: at big important things evolutionarily in science if we can't
Speaker 3: get the little things right. It's dying of measles, kids
Speaker 3: even getting sick of measles, being hospitalized with measles, it
Speaker 3: doesn't need to happen.
Speaker 2: It's a travesty, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think most of the people, frankly that we
Speaker 3: spoke to, and not just people in the medical community,
Speaker 3: but we spend a lot of time talking to citizens
Speaker 3: just going around taking the temperature. I think there was
Speaker 3: a lot of frustration, but at the same time they're
Speaker 3: being assaulted with all sorts of information that is not accurate.
Speaker 2: You know. This seemed to have started in a small.
Speaker 3: Community, a Mennonite community, and it's really interesting. There's nothing
Speaker 3: in the religious doctrine that says they shouldn't take measles vaccine.
Speaker 3: But what happens is we learned you may know, Governor,
Speaker 3: is that these very insular communities, they don't get a
Speaker 3: lot of outside information often so they may have somebody
Speaker 3: in the community whose child developed the febril seizure or something.
Speaker 3: I think that's what happened here. After a vaccine, that
Speaker 3: can happen and right away that spread, like you know,
Speaker 3: wildfire through that community, and all of a sudden, nobody
Speaker 3: wanted to get vaccinated when you're dealing with something as
Speaker 3: contagious as measles. Then that community as they're walking through
Speaker 3: the town of gains or wherever you know, the costco
Speaker 3: or fast food wrestler, whatever it may be, you can
Speaker 3: start to spread the virus. So that's what was happening there.
Speaker 3: I will say to RF case credit, he did go
Speaker 3: there and he was conciliatory towards vaccines.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 3: He did, at least in the moment, recommend the measles
Speaker 3: vaccine to people, which which I thought was really important
Speaker 3: and really really good. I think since then he sort
Speaker 3: of he's sort of backtracked on that. Obviously with COVID.
Speaker 3: I think COVID seems to be sort of low hanging
Speaker 3: fruit because the uptake has been so low already that
Speaker 3: the idea of saying we're not recommending it anymore was
Speaker 3: sort of I think easy. But I think with regard
Speaker 3: to MMR and other things, they're critically important, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think the hopefully that message continues to get out there.
Speaker 2: I think it's changing.
Speaker 3: Even in West Texas. I think that you know, you
Speaker 3: did see increase measles uptake. We were at clinics, pop
Speaker 3: up clinics, and people were showing up to get measles
Speaker 3: vaccine that had never been vaccinated in their lives. So
Speaker 3: you know, I think in the throes of something like that,
Speaker 3: you do see behavior changing a bit.
Speaker 1: It's encouraging in the behavior, and I appreciate your reverence.
Speaker 2: R Ok.
Speaker 1: But it just depends on the day of the week.
Speaker 1: I mean, he says that when he's there on the ground,
Speaker 1: and then he gets into the cabinet meeting and says, well,
Speaker 1: we have outbreaks all the time. And you know, even
Speaker 1: though this disease was substantially you know what two thousand,
Speaker 1: it was declared gone right.
Speaker 3: Correct, it was declared eliminated at that point. And there
Speaker 3: have been some measles outbreaks since then. I mean there
Speaker 3: was one night in twenty nineteen I think it affected
Speaker 3: Disneyland and that's right as well Minnesota, Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: So there have been measles outbreaks.
Speaker 3: But you know, this, this this vaccine hesitancy issue has
Speaker 3: been around for a while. You know, I've been a
Speaker 3: reporter for twenty five years now almost. And I'll tell
Speaker 3: you what's interesting to me. And I'm curious if this
Speaker 3: is interesting to you. But if ten years ago, if
Speaker 3: you said, who is the most likely person in America
Speaker 3: to be vaccine hesitant, describe that person, and I think
Speaker 3: what you would likely have described at that point was
Speaker 3: a young person liberal and woman usually among right.
Speaker 1: Oh, I trust me. I grew up in the Bay Area,
Speaker 1: so you can appreciate it. In California, I know a
Speaker 1: lot of them. Yeah, perfectly described.
Speaker 3: And now in twenty twenty five, I think the demographics
Speaker 3: have changed in terms of who's most likely to be
Speaker 3: vaccine hesitant or resistant, older white conservative men. And I
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not a politician, but I'll tell you
Speaker 3: I think that these issues are used as proxy issues
Speaker 3: for a larger sort of conflict. You know, vaccines are
Speaker 3: the issue. I think people glom onto. It's understandable, they
Speaker 3: can sink their teeth into it and all that. But
Speaker 3: within ten years, even less than that. Frankly, I think
Speaker 3: it was twenty nineteen, maybe six years ago you would
Speaker 3: have said young liberal women and now older conservative man.
Speaker 3: I think within six years it's completely flipped. And I
Speaker 3: think there's other proxy issues like that as well. And
Speaker 3: I think it just sends a signal that these are
Speaker 3: you can't disentangle anything from politics. I never thought of
Speaker 3: vaccine hesitancy as a political issue.
Speaker 2: I thought thought it was concerned moms.
Speaker 3: My wife would have conversations should we get all the
Speaker 3: vaccines at once or should we spread them out a
Speaker 3: little bit? And I would sit down and talk to
Speaker 3: her about anergetic load and all that, and I think
Speaker 3: she definitely listened to me, but it required a conversation.
Speaker 3: So I got that. Now it's all politics, it seems,
Speaker 3: and that's very difficult to sort of confront.
Speaker 1: No, And I mean I think it goes to our
Speaker 1: opening conversation as well. I mean that was this certainly
Speaker 1: the case with Michelle Obama. I mean, she was just
Speaker 1: just ridiculed and attacked for, you know, focusing on healthy
Speaker 1: foods and focusing on our kids and chronic disease and
Speaker 1: issues around obesity. And and that's why I think it's
Speaker 1: important for those that may be critical of the MAGA
Speaker 1: movement to be at least sensitive to the attributes and
Speaker 1: the positive components of the MAHA frame that is, focusing
Speaker 1: on the same issue coming in from different political lens certainly,
Speaker 1: and not get you know, sort of caught up in
Speaker 1: this vaccine issue when we focus on the fundamental issues
Speaker 1: of wellness, which I think we just as a country
Speaker 1: need to come to grips with.
Speaker 2: I think that's the challenge.
Speaker 3: People like to look at these and binary ways, Maha bad,
Speaker 3: Maha good.
Speaker 2: There's goods and.
Speaker 3: Bads to it, you know, I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff that as a health very health conscious person myself,
Speaker 3: someone who thinks a lot about longevity. I got parents
Speaker 3: in eighties, I got teenage kids. I think about this
Speaker 3: all the time. There's a lot of things that the
Speaker 3: Maha movement says that I totally agree with, and again,
Speaker 3: things that you have been doing in California with regard
Speaker 3: to our foods. I think seventy percent of illness chronic
Speaker 3: disease in this country is preventable, and again we spend
Speaker 3: four and a half trillion dollars on it. So preventing
Speaker 3: seventy percent I mean medically obviously important, but also morally
Speaker 3: and financially and everything else. The vast majority of those
Speaker 3: preventable disease I think comes in how we nourish ourselves
Speaker 3: our food supply. So I totally understand that. Again, I
Speaker 3: wish it didn't have to be done in a mean
Speaker 3: spirited way. You know, it's just not my personality to
Speaker 3: be vitriolic to get things done. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: I think people have been talking about trying to reform
Speaker 3: our food supply for a quarter century, and it hasn't
Speaker 3: really been done.
Speaker 2: Maybe this will.
Speaker 3: It's already leading to some changes with regard to food
Speaker 3: dies and things like that.
Speaker 2: We'll see where that all lands.
Speaker 3: So I think some of it is really important, but
Speaker 3: there's other parts of it that I think. In vaccines,
Speaker 3: I guess would be the best example where I have
Speaker 3: real concerns.
Speaker 1: Tune in for more with doctor s